Page:Life and prophecies of that faithful minister of God's word, Mr Donald Cargill.pdf/28

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The Life and Prophesies

much, if not all, of religion, in these external parts of christianity, as prayers, restings, and mournings, and contendings for the testimony: For sufferings of the same, though they were duties, in themselves, yet whosoever rested upon them would have a cauld coal to blow at in the end: Nothing is ours but sin, nor one to us, but the wages of it. Death In the application of that sermon, he gave warning of the snares and sins of the Gibbites and their actings, and how dangerous it was to call off all ministers: And exhorted us to pray for faithful ministers to ourselves, and never content ourselves without them; for we would not continue long sound in the faith and straight in the way, if we wanted faithful guides. And, for all the respect that these divided parties of dissenters, or rather schismatics and separatists, pretend to, Mr. Cargill, Cameron, Shields, and Renwick, and every one of them to be their successors, and maintaining the testimony which they sealed with, their blood: how little do they notice the sententious writings and sayings of these worthies? And I am persuaded, if they were upon the stage this day that none would speak, preach; and write more against: all the divided parties of them, and their antiscriptural, wild, unprecedented principles and practices: and these that cast of all ministers this day in Scotland, if they had been living through all the periods of this church, would never have embraced any as their ministers, nor none in other churches this day through the world. It was one of the sententious sayings of the reverend Mr. James Kirktoun, in his pulpit in Edinburgh, insisting upon Scotland's singular privileges above all other churches for a long time, "That there had been ministers in Scotland that had the gift of working miracles, and prophesying, which he could instruct; and that he had heard French, Dutch, English Irish, and other ministers preach; and yet there have been, and are ministers in Scotland, that preach more from the heart, and to the heart, than any that ever he had heard."